
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap... Copyright No. 

Shelf..i_i_A_?- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE CHRIST OF GOD 

THE RATIONALE OF THE 
DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST 



CHARLES H. MANN 



" He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? 
Peter answering said, The Christ of God." 

Luke ix., 20. 



iNEW lUKK Pi.W\J UUnuun *^ > 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS \J^ Q ^\ \o t -^ K 
1897 



C 



3^-^^^" 
yx^ 



Copyright, 1897 

BY 

CHARLES H. MANN 



XCbe ftnic{ierbocl;ec press, -View IQotit 






(Tontents. 



I. — Wiser in Their Generation . . i 

II. — Rolled Together as a Scroll . 8 

III. — The Only Begotten Son . . 27 

IV. — Without a Parable Spake He Not 38 

V. — Despised and Rejected ... 66 

VI. — He Shall Save His People . . 82 
VII. — We Beheld His Glory . . .104 



THE CHRIST OF GOD 



I. 

WISER IN THEIR 
GENERATION 

' ' For the children of this world are in this their 
generation wiser than the children of light." — Luke 
xvi., 8. 

1WELL recall how I felt when as a 
child I first got hold of the idea 
that the sky was not a solid substance, 
but was only the appearance which the 
depths of space presented to the eye ; 
thus, that when looking at it we were 
not looking at a surface cutting off our 
view of things beyond, but were gazing 
into the infinite universe. It was as 



XLbc Cbri6t of ©oD 



sudden and as ample an enlargement 
of my mental conception of my envi- 
ronment as a chicken's breaking its 
shell is an enlargement of its field of 
life. Equally was this so with the race, 
when in the history of scientific thought 
man came into this idea. The shiver- 
ing of Ptolemj^'s spheres was the break- 
ing of the shell that cut man off from a 
knowledge of the boundless creation 
outside the world in which he found 
himself. 

But a corresponding expansion has 
not yet come to the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. The generally accepted faith 
of Christendom to-day does not differ 
essentially from what it was ten centu- 
ries ago. The spheres of Ptolemy still 
hedge the average Christian's ideas of 
God and of spiritual life. In the realm 
of natural thought the civilized man of 
intelligence has burst his shell, but spir- 
itually he is still struggling with the 
limitations of his natal prison. And 
this difference between the progress of 



Timieer in tbeir (3eneratton 



man's natural and of his spiritual ways 
of thinking exists not alone in science ; 
it is to be found in politics and business 
as well. While our business methods 
surpass all previous ways of transacting 
human affairs, in religion we are com- 
paratively at a standstill. We travel by 
railway naturally, but in a stage-coach 
spiritually. It is true that there have 
been great changes in religious think- 
ing ; we might call them mighty changes 
— that the Bible is subjected to new 
and more penetrating methods of criti- 
cism, so that to many it has seemed to 
be a new book, and has even been called 
a '* new Bible." But all these newnesses 
are not essential newnesses; they are 
not radical as are the ways of our natu- 
ral thinking; they are not revolution- 
ary as are the ways of modern science ; 
they are all on the same grade of 
thought. They are related to past 
spiritual thought as an enlargement, or 
more perfect adjustment, of Ptolemy's 
spheres would be to past scientific 



Zbc Cbrfet of (3o& 



thought. They do not break the en- 
casing walls and let our spiritual thought 
out into the universe of God, as the 
Copernican system does our natural 
thought of God's creation, Man's re- 
ligion ought to give him as grand con- 
ceptions of God as his science gives 
him of God's works. But, instead of 
this, man's religion, even the Christian 
branch of it as commonly received, pre- 
sents God as inadequately as Ptolemy 
presented the universe, and with a simi- 
lar self-centredness. As the latter cen- 
tred creation at the earth, instead of 
discovering, as did Copernicus, that it 
was centred at the sun ; so in the pre- 
vailing interpretations of Christianity, 
man and man's interests are represented 
as the centres about which God and 
divine things revolve, and even God 
Himself, according to these teachings, 
is bounded by human limitations. But 
all spiritual conceptions ought to be 
theocentric ; that is, God and His pur- 
poses should be represented as the cen- 



TRIlisec in tbelc ©enccation 



tres from which man, his creation, and 
his destiny, are determined. 

It is true that many deny the doc- 
trines of the Christian faith, believing 
in nature and in such a God as they 
can conceive of from nature. Not a 
few men of scientific ideas have re- 
nounced the pent-up conceptions which 
I have called Ptolemaic, and in their 
place have preached evolution and its 
wonders. 

But such persons do not enlarge our 
spiritual thought ; they merely substi- 
tute for spiritual thought an enlarged 
natural thought. The God they present, 
if God he may be called, is a scientific, 
not a religious conception. What I 
affirm is that the world has not as yet at- 
tained into a Christianity commensurate 
v/ith its science. We want a Christian- 
ity which on the one hand shall lift 
us from the limitations of past ideas 
on religious themes as effectually as 
modern astronomy has lifted us out of 
the spatial ideas of our earthly places, 



Zbc Cbrist ot (3oD 



and yet which on the other shall be a 
distinctive and unquestionable Christi- 
anity. We want to retain all the de- 
votion, the earnestness of life, the 
comfort in sorrow, the strength in 
temptation, the repentance for sin, the 
seeking after righteousness, the worship 
and love of God, and the faith in Him 
and His revelation which have ever 
pertained to Christianity, at the very 
moment that we rise in our spiritual 
conceptions as far above the interpre- 
tations of these things which have here- 
tofore prevailed, as to-day's science rises 
above the interpretations which man 
gave to nature a thousand years ago. 
We want a doctrine of God's love which 
will present it as a thing as grand and 
as universal as science teaches the power 
of gravitation to be in nature ; we want 
ideas of wisdom co-extensive with our 
ideas of natural law ; and we want such 
a conception of the divine Father as 
will enable Him to come inspiringly 
into our personal lives, yet which, not- 
6 



Miser in tbeic Generation 



withstanding that personal nearness, 
shall be commensurate with our con- 
ceptions of the whole kingdom of 
nature. To that resurrection of spirit- 
ual intelligence into a really new world 
of truth and of doctrine, the Church 
has not yet attained. 

Yet there must be such height and 
breadth of spiritual thought possible to 
man. However the " children of this 
world " may be ** in their generation 
wiser than the children of light," there 
must be a method and a time when the 
latter shall come into their birthright, 
when the at-present mightier ways of 
the science of nature shall be rivalled 
by the then equally mighty ways of 
man's understanding of the life and the 
teachings of Jesus Christ. 



II. 

ROLLED TOGETHER AS 
A SCROLL. 

' ' The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. " 
— Isaiah xxxiv., 4 ; Rev. vi., 14. 

THE sky is perhaps the most astound- 
ing of all the phenomena of nature. 
Extending above us like a magnificent 
dome, even in its sensuous appeals to 
the eye it is the sublimest of all sense- 
impressions. But grand as is the sky as 
an object of vision, it is transcendently 
more grand when we contemplate what 
it is that looks thus to us, and what are 
the things which we find in it ; that is, 
when we recognize in the objects of the 
sky the stupendous creations of nature 
in them revealed. In fact, man's present 
interpretation of the phenomena of the 



TRoUeD ^ogetber as a Scroll 



sky was the step which most effectually 
revolutionized all his conceptions of 
natural things. So long as the earth 
was thought to be the centre of the 
universe, while the sky and its sun, 
moon, and stars were regarded as only 
attendants circling about it, all true 
progress was impossible. But with the 
new understanding of the sky a new 
centre was recognized, and a new science 
was inaugurated. 

The natural sky, however, is not the 
only sky there is. There is a spiritual 
sky. By this I mean that there is a 
phenomenon which sustains the same 
relation to the objects of our spiritual 
thought as that which the sky sustains 
to the objects of our scientific thought. 
It is the sensuous appearance in which 
the things of spiritual life show them- 
selves to our earthly vision. The ob- 
jects it presents to us, like those of the 
natural sky, are seemingly of small im- 
port, but also like those of the natural 
sky, they will be found of infinite sig- 



Xlbc Cbrlst ot (5oD 



nificance when rightly understood. Ap- 
pearing when superficially observed as 
a merely natural feature of our earthly 
life, even as the sky looked to the eyes 
of our ancestors as though made of a 
substance like other objects of vision, 
this spiritual sky will be found, unlike 
all other similar phenomena, in this also 
resembling the natural sky, to have its 
origin in a realm outside the earth. The 
phenomenon of life which meets this 
description, we find in the religions of 
the earth, and in the thoughts, the 
deeds, and the achievements which have 
come from them. These are to man's 
spiritual thought what the sky is to his 
natural thought. They meet the defini- 
tion of a spiritual sky because they are 
at once an external, tangible, and evi- 
dent thing to the senses, and yet are 
not necessitated by any circumstance 
of man's earthly life or condition. All 
other phenomena of man's life have 
their origin in some circumstance of his 
earthly condition. Because man's body 



IRoUeD XLoQCXbct as a Scroll 



must be fed, we have an enormous 
number of workers engaged in a multi- 
tude of co-related professions ; we have 
great enterprises undertaken and ad- 
ministered, and mighty engineries con- 
structed and operated. Because man 
must have clothing and shelter there 
are numberless laborers employed, and 
incalculable activity manifested. The 
bearing and rearing of children, the 
protection of life and liberty, the ob- 
taining of wealth and luxury — all these 
necessities of our life on earth, and 
others too many to enumerate, are the 
evident causes of human struggle and 
conflict ; of mighty efforts and stupen- 
dous achievements, constituting a vast 
expression of life in the world. But in 
the phenomena of religion we have ex- 
pressions of life without the earthly 
conditions requiring them. We have 
the struggle, the conflict, the effort, and 
the achievements ; we have the great 
structures erected, and the incalculable 
activity manifested, but no answering 



^be Cbrlst ot (5oD 



need of food, raiment, shelter, protec- 
tion, or any other thing calling for all 
this exhibition of life. The phenomena 
of religion thus essentially differ from 
all other phenomena of man's life on 
earth, even as the phenomena of the 
sky differ from all other visions of the 
eye. 

This fact, patent to the eye of the 
thoughtful and unprejudiced observer, 
has been rarely recognized and, as was 
the first announcement of a revolving 
earth, has often been denied ; for in his 
interpretation of this spiritual sky man 
to-day makes the same mistake that in 
the past he made in reference to his 
understanding of the natural sky. When 
in reference to this last, man first began 
to consider what it might be, because 
he found that every other impression 
made upon the eye had an answering 
reality wrought in earthly substances — 
some of them, such as certain precious 
stones, the distant sea, etc., actually 
looking like the sky — he naturally con- 



IRoIIeD XLoQctbcv as a Scroll 



eluded that the sky itself was likewise 
made of a substance. It is only in re- 
cent centuries that even among the 
learned the real source of this phenom- 
enon has been known. The cumber- 
some teachings of Ptolemy have had a 
longer acceptance among men than the 
Copernican doctrine, and even to-day if 
we take all the races of men, there are 
more persons who do not understand 
the nature of the sky than there are 
who do. 

Much more does man misinterpret 
the nature of the spiritual sky. As 
might have been anticipated, he looks 
upon the exhibition of the religious im- 
pulse in history either as derived from 
some feature of his natural condition or 
environment, or as being constituted 
solely of the outer things ; of ritual, 
form, and observance, and of their sen- 
suous effects, of which it seems to con- 
sist. But this is as profound a mistake 
as men of the past made in reference 
to the natural sky. It is as impossible 

13 



^be Cbrlst ot ©oD 



to satisfy the facts connected with the 
appearance of the phenomena consti- 
tuting the spiritual sky by such suppo- 
sitions, as it would be to construct the 
natural sky of adamant. As this last is 
the sense-expression of a kingdom of 
nature grander than the earth, so is the 
phenomenon of religion on earth, which 
is man's spiritual sky, the sensuous ex- 
pression of a kingdom of life grander 
than man's earthly experience. The 
eternal things within are what manifest 
themselves through these varied outer 
forms — through words and deeds, 
through art and science, and through 
the purposes and ideas which character- 
ize man's external religious life. These 
last, which are man's spiritual sky, are 
all that the natural man can see of 
spiritual things, just as the sky above 
is all that the eye can see of the extra- 
terrestrial things of nature. Gathered 
together in history, they give us a mag- 
nificent natural imagery of spiritual 
things. 



IRoIleD (Togetber as a Scroll 



For the Christian, applying this con- 
ception of the sky to his special field of 
thought and experience, the letter of 
the Scripture constitutes the spiritual 
sky/ Every scriptural character may 
be regarded as a star in that sky ; and 
Jesus Christ, the centre about which all 
the contents of the Scripture revolve, 
is its Sun. These constituents of our 
spiritual sky overspread us religiously 
as the sky does in sensuous appearance ; 
and when looked upon for what they 
appear to be in themselves instead of 
being looked upon for what there is be- 
hind them, they shut in our understand- 
ing of spiritual things as the spheres of 
Ptolemy shut in our forefathers' know- 

' I use the word " sky" here, not as applying to 
the phenomenal heavens rightly understood, but 
solely to the sense-appearance of the extra-mundane 
creation v/hen regarded as something in itself. The 
scriptural word referring to this surface-seeming of 
the sky, is "clouds." Hence the prophecy that 
' ' the Son of man shall appear in the clouds of 
heaven," signifies the revelation of the Lord within 
the letter of the Word. 

15 



^be Cbrlst of (5oD 



ledge of the grander works of nature. 
Yet for what they appear to be in 
themselves the expounders of Christian 
faith have looked upon these things 
through the ages of the Church's his- 
tory, thereby hedging in their concep- 
tions of spiritual things to the very 
restricted field of the external appear- 
ance which they have made before their 
eyes. 

Can this spiritual wall of sky — in 
scriptural language called '' the clouds " 
— which shuts off our view of greater 
things, be dissipated as has been its 
natural prototype ? May it not be true 
that as there was a drawing aside of the 
natural sky, thereby giving man a view 
of the infinite things of nature, there 
may in like manner be a drawing aside 
of the spiritual sky, which shall give us 
a heretofore unequalled view of the in- 
finite things of God ? As a new inter- 
pretation gave us true vision as to the 
one, may there not be a new interpreta- 
tion which shall give us true vision as 
i6 



IRolleD trogetber as a Scroll 



to the other? If we can understand 
the phenomena of our spiritual sky in 
a way to make it infinite as our under- 
standing of the appearances of the 
natural sky has made that infinite, then 
shall be accomplished that for which 
the world is waiting — the construction 
of a spiritual system which without de- 
tracting from its spirituality shall rival 
the sweep and the grandeur of our 
science of nature. 

It is my faith that the sky-like phe- 
nomena of religious life may be re- 
moved by the recognition of their real 
origin. As the natural sky, as a veil to 
a true knowledge of the universe, dis- 
appeared when men saw that what had 
been taken as a solid substance was 
only the sense-impression which the in- 
finite domain of nature outside the 
earth made upon the eye ; so our 
spiritual sky, as a veil to a correspond- 
ing knowledge of heavenly things, will 
disappear when we see that religious 
phenomena are only the outer forms 

17 



tibe Cbrtst of (5o& 



which the divine things within man, 
infinitely greater than all doctrine, 
ritual and external organization, as- 
sume in his earthly life. 

If we seek thus to look upon religion, 
we must rise entirely above all questions 
as to the correctness or the erroneous- 
ness of the varied doctrines men hold 
in the many faiths of the world, and 
recognize all religions as in some sense 
authenticated by their ministration to 
man's spiritual need. Man's faith has 
proved itself such a motive power in 
his life, and thus such a marvellous 
factor in the evolution of society, that 
we are compelled to recognize the fact 
that religion itself is the effect of the 
workings of some invisible but mighty 
power within man, which exhibits itself 
in this tendency of his to acknowledge 
some principle or authority outside his 
life to which he confesses allegiance, 
and by whose laws or commands he 
holds himself bound. Religion in its 
ultimate analysis is, as its name sug- 
i8 



IRoUeD G:ogetbec as a Scroll 



gests, simply the binding of man to 
this marvellous, and, from the natural 
man's point of view, irrational allegiance. 
Its essentials are, first, that a man's 
recognition of any authority over him 
be not a matter of food, clothing, 
shelter, or other earthly want, but 
should be derived from some principle 
having its basis outside the conditions 
and interests of his personal earthly 
life ; and, secondly, that it command 
his actual service. Patriotism in some 
of its forms has been such a religion 
with many. Laws of honor, so called, 
have been the religion of some. Any- 
thing that fills this position in a man's Hfe 
is his religion in fact, whatever be its 
name ; and anything which fails of fill- 
ing such position in his life, is as a fact 
not his religion, howsoever by religious 
title he may designate it. 

But the formulated doctrines of any 
religion, other than in their substantia- 
tion of these essentials, and the special 
forms it assumes among men, are man's 
19 



^be Gbrist of (3oD 



understanding of this interior and es- 
sential religion ; they are only his defi- 
nition, interpretation, explanation, and 
application of it. Religion as a phe- 
nomenon of life shows its power in a 
great measure independently of the 
question of the adequacy of the doc- 
trines its votaries preach. These last 
have been often sadly deficient, but 
their inadequacy does not invalidate 
the stupendous import of religion as a 
fact of boundless significance. Reli- 
gious faiths are inmostly not matters 
of doctrine, but are the ministration to 
a hunger in man's soul. Seeking a re- 
lief for this hunger, and finding the 
spiritual food which nourishes him, man 
looks about for reasons with which to 
explain his state, and these he puts 
forth as the grounds for the acceptance 
of his faith. But for the most part 
they are not. Man believes because 
his heart is fed and his soul satisfied in 
believing, while his doctrines are his 
understanding, his interpretation of the 



IRolleD JlOQcthct as a Scroll 



satisfaction and spiritual sustenance he 
gets from his belief. And in like man- 
ner with the Church. The wonders it 
has accomplished for man's spiritual 
satisfaction are the substantial, the real 
things of its history. Its doctrines are 
the ideas of its expounders concerning 
these things. 

This breadth in the recognition of the 
validity of a religion should not be con- 
founded with the disposition not to dis- 
tinguish between the qualities of various 
religions ; nor should it be mistaken for 
an indifference to the importance of 
true doctrines. Different religions are 
like different modes of natural life. As 
any way of living by which man is able 
to subsist must be accepted as a valid 
natural life, while between the debased 
Hottentot and the wealthy and refined 
European there are indefinite degrees 
in the quality and desirability of ways 
of life, so, notwithstanding that there 
are multitudes of differing and often 
seemingly conflicting religions, all of 



^be Cbrist ot (3oD 



which are in some degree valid, some 
are vastly superior in quality to others, 
and are more to be desired than they. 

That erroneousness of doctrine does 
not necessarily invalidate a religion as a 
source of spiritual use to man, is well 
illustrated in the fields of our natural 
thought. The sun, for instance, is the 
supreme fact of our experience of day 
and night. We cannot overestimate 
the significance of its relation to the 
earth which is abjectly dependent for 
life upon its coming and its going. But 
the theories concerning the sun which 
men have entertained, have often been 
inadequate, and are doubtless at this 
moment inadequate. But so long as 
a man knows enough to take any ad- 
vantage of its daily shining, his false 
doctrines concerning the sun do not 
destroy its usefulness. In reference to 
every phenomenon of nature man has 
held, and still holds, erroneous concep- 
tions, and thus teaches erroneous doc- 
trines. But however right or wrong 



IRoIleD XloQctbct as a Scroll 



the doctrines, the facts remain with all 
their meaning and power. We have 
day and night just as really and just as 
powerfully whether the theories we 
hold concerning the sun's coming and 
going be right or wrong. And so 
spiritually. We no more do away with 
the significance of the position which 
Christianity has held in man's history, 
and which it holds in his life to-day, by 
showing how its followers have inade- 
quately understood it, or have held to 
irrational doctrines, or have even al- 
lowed their natural savagery to practice 
cruelty in its name, than we do away 
with fire and its inestimable usefulness 
to man's life on earth because the 
phlogistic theory concerning it is ex- 
ploded, or because at times it has been 
man's enemy. Erroneous religious doc- 
trines no more vitiate the principle or 
the fact of religion, than erroneous 
ideas concerning bread destroys its 
nourishing qualities. 

Carefully separating, then, our 

23 



Zbe abrist ot (Bo5 



[/ 



thoughts of religion itself from our 
thought of religious doctrines, which last 
are often only the apologies which men 
have put forth for holding to the first, 
we find religion presented before us as 
the most stupendous phenomenon of 
man's experience. No other one feature 
of the story of the unfolding of man's 
life on earth has so strikingly, so persist- 
ently, so universally, and so signifi- 
cantly manifested itself as this. In the 
struggles of the individual life, and in 
the wars of nations and peoples ; in all 
phases of human experience ; in affairs 
domestic and public ; in art, in architec- 
ture, in the general thought-Hfe of the 
race, the influence of religion has sur- 
passed that of every other force in 
human life.' 

^ The flippant treatment which many social phil- 
osophers have given the fact of religion in man's 
history, pooh-poohing it out of the field of serious 
attention, and accounting for it by the flimsiest and 
most insufficient hypotheses, causes one unspeakable 
astonishment. It is a great satisfaction in this con- 
nection to meet with the intelligent recognition of 

24 



TRolIeD XLoQCthct ne a Scroll 



Gathering before us in thought the 
drama of religious history and to-day's 
religious devotion and life, the Scrip- 
ture and the lives of the people and 
persons therein recorded, and su- 
premely the life of Jesus Christ as 
the essential centre of all, embodying 
in himself the sum and substance of 
the whole, we may recognize these 
manifestations on earth as the forms in 
which are presented to our natural 
thought the infinite forces of God in 
the life of man. They all proclaim an 
unspeakable Presence within, an infinite 
and otherwise inexpressible divine spirit 
which through them is exhibiting itself. 
In putting away the thought that re- 
ligion as a phenomenon is to be judged 
by the truth or the falsity of the doc- 
trines of religious faith which men pro- 
claim, and contemplating religion as a 
stupendous witness of God's presence 

religion as a phenomenon of history in Mr. Benja- 
min Kidd's Social Evolution. Published by Mac- 
millan & Co., London and New York. 

25 



(Tbe dbrist of 6o& 



within, we are making preparation for 
removing the clouds from our spirit- 
ual sky ; for removing the sky itself as 
an obstruction to the eye, that we may 
behold the infinite things of eternal life 
making themselves known through even 
these often unworthy appearances. 



26 



III. 

THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON. 

*' No man hath seen God at any time ; the only 
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, 
he hath declared him."— John i., i8. 

" Who is the image of the invisible God, the first 
born of every creature." — Col. i., 15. 

AS the sun is the centre of our astro- 
nomical system, and as the recog- 
nition of the nature and the position of 
the sun and its relation to the earth at 
once broke up the sky as a firmament 
and gave us our modern cosmogony, so 
Jesus Christ is the centre of our Chris- 
tian religious system ; and as a next 
step after the general recognition of 
religion as a phenomenon evidencing 
God's presence in the life of m.an, we 
must look for the breaking up of our 
spiritual sky to a new understanding of 

27 



CTbe Cbrist ot (5oD 



Him and of His life. If we can obtain 
a really larger conception of Christ — 
larger, not by learning more perfectly 
in the old lines of thought who and 
what He was, but radically and in new 
lines of interpretation larger ; larger be- 
yond basis of comparison, — our purpose 
will be attained, Christianity will have 
taken the step corresponding to that 
which science took some centuries ago. 
We prepare to take this step, that is, 
we lay the foundation for this larger 
conception, by coming into a just ap- 
preciation of what is meant by the 
chiefest of the assumptions of Jesus 
Christ for Himself, and the supreme 
claim of His followers in His behalf, 
that He is the Son of God. And He is 
presented to us as the Son of God, not 
in the general way in which all regener- 
ating persons may become Sons of God,^ 
but in a special sense — an '' only begot- 
ten Son." This is the supreme, the 
constantly re-afifirmed, and the ever-in- 

^ John i., 12. 
2d 



Zbc ©nli2 SBcQOttcn Son 



sisted-on title applied to Jesus Christ. 
Peter's annunciation of his faith in this 
doctrine, as the account is given in Mat- 
thew/ led to the Lord's supreme bless- 
ing, and to His statement that on that 
rock He had founded His Church. The 
first preaching of Paul seems to have 
consisted wholly in the proclamation of 
this doctrine.^ This was the entire con- 
fession of faith of the eunuch whom 
Philip accepted and baptized.^ Let us 
not close our eyes to the vastness of 
this claim. Let us not hesitate to place 
our grandest conception of what God 
the Creator and Sustainer of the uni- 
verse must be, by the side of the vision 
of the seemingly weak and sorrowful 
Man given us in Gospel delineation. 
Familiarity with the doctrine of Christ's 
"only begotten" Sonship and our accept- 
ance of it from childhood, may dull our 
appreciation of its startlingness. But 
let us without shrinking place before 

' Matthew xvi. , i6, 17. 
^ Acts ix., 20. 2 Acts viii., 37. 

29 



^be Cbrist of (5oD 



ourselves the contrast between the Man 
as He is pictured, and this teaching 
concerning His nature, and ask: What 
is meant by this surpassing claim ? and 
what is its application to our efforts to 
see beyond the seeming limitations of 
our spiritual sky ? 

Putting aside the unscriptural and 
inconceivable idea of two equal, divine 
persons related from eternity as Father 
and Son, which has been taught in 
orthodox theology — since our concern is 
not with extra-human or divine rela- 
tionships, sustained from eternity, which 
are necessarily beyond human compre- 
hension — but with this visible Man and 
God's relation to His parentage, we 
ask simply: What, as applied to Him, 
can mean this awe inspiring claim of 
being the "only begotten" when in- 
terpreted in the light of our highest 
and broadest understanding of the 
words in which the affirmation is 
couched ? We need an understanding 
of the subject which will give this doc- 
30 



Zbc ©nl^ :©egotten Son 



trine a position in our minds spiritually 
corresponding to that held naturally by 
our conceptions of the grander creations 
of the universe, the suns and worlds 
about us. 

If we critically examine and analyze 
our methods of understanding natural 
things, especially the greater natural 
things, we shall discover a law in the 
light of which this question of the 
'' only begotten " Sonship can be under- 
stood. It is a broad general principle, 
understood well by him who has ex- 
amined the subject interiorly, that our 
only knowledge of all objects is derived, 
not from grasping the objects them- 
selves, but from an impression which 
they make upon our sensories. If we 
take cognizance of a house, nothing 
from us projects itself around the build- 
ing and brings the object itself into our- 
selves ; not one particle of the building 
itself do we take hold of ; but there is 
a something which we call light, and 
this in a form modified by its contact 



Zbc Cbxiet of 0o& 



with the building, flows into a receptacle 
called the eye, and there is begotten 
from that influx a certain image of the 
house, an image which may be regarded 
as an offspring, a child born from the 
house, and that image declares the na- 
ture of the house to us. If we look 
upon a beautiful scene we may describe 
it as extending itself out in magnificent 
proportions before us ; we may speak 
of valleys and hills and mountains 
stretching away in the dim distance. 
What precisely does this mean ? What 
do we know about all these things of 
which we speak so confidently ? Only 
this : That there has been an influx of 
something from them into us, and that 
this influx has begotten in us an image. 
Our language is nothing else than our 
interpretation of what that image has 
declared to us. 

This is most forcibly illustrated by 
our interpretation of the phenomena of 
nature, and thence our knowledge of 
the great universe about us— an illus- 

32 



Zbc ©nlB :fl3egotten Son 



tration especially applicable to this sub- 
ject since we are seeking that very kind 
of interpretation, and thence that kind 
of knowledge of spiritual things. No 
one of us has ever left the surface of 
this little globe ; no one has stretclred 
himself out and taken unto himself a 
single star ; and yet we talk with the 
supremest confidence of the distance of 
the stars, their size, and in many cases 
of their weight. How do we know 
about these things ? Only this : Some- 
thing has flowed from them into our 
sensories, and has there begotten images 
of them, images which might be called 
their sons ; and it is these sons of theirs 
that have declared to us what we know 
of them. So completely do we identify 
these images with the objects from 
which they are begotten that we use 
the language of identity always, and 
with the greatest confidence. We say : 
There is the sun, that enormous ball of 
fire. But the only sun we know any- 
thing about by direct consciousness, is 

33 



trbe Cbrist of (3o& 



a tiny image of the sun on the retina of 
the eye ; and all our knowledge of the 
greatness of the sun itself is our inter- 
pretation of the meaning of that image 
— that is, our knowledge is what that 
image has declared to us. 

This unvarying law, so well under- 
stood in reference to our intelligence in 
matters of natural knowledge, must be 
just as true in reference to spiritual 
things. The law under which a know- 
ledge of heavenly truth may be re- 
ceived, that is, the law for receiving 
spiritual conceptions, must be the same 
upon its plane as is this law by which 
the objects of physical sensation are 
made known to us. Every spiritual 
conception we are capable of receiving 
is revealed to us by means of an image 
of the conception begotten in us which 
tells us what we know. 

This is especially, supremely, and 
necessarily true of God. If we would 
know our divine Father, from the very 
nature of our methods for receiving all 

34 



Zbc ®nlB SBcQottcn Son 



truth such knowledge must come from 
an image of God which shall be God's 
Son, begotten by influx from Him into 
our life, who shall declare Him, It is 
far more conceivable that we should be 
able to stretch ourselves out and incor- 
porate into our being the very universe 
itself, than that we should be able to 
take within ourselves directly a know- 
ledge of God. But as it is a divinely 
arranged provision that on the material 
plane of life there may be created in 
our organs of sensation an image of the 
universe from which we may have a 
knowledge of it, how could it be other- 
wise, since the ways of our spiritual 
intelligence are parallel to those of our 
natural intelligence, than that this 
should also be the method on the 
spiritual plane of life for making known 
to us spiritual things, especially for 
revealing God to us ; in a word, that 
there should be begotten in man's capa- 
city for spiritual conception, an image 
of God which should be called His Son ? 

35 



(Tbe Gbriet of (5oD 



This principle furnishes us with the 
law for a new interpretation of the h'fe 
of Jesus Christ, an interpretation which 
will give us a knowledge of God cor- 
responding to our knowledge of the 
material universe. We may look upon 
His life as the image of God, begotten 
in the life of man during man's spiritual 
history, and rightly subject to an inter- 
pretation which shall demonstrate His 
seeming limitations to be the limita- 
tions of man's capacity for reception, 
but which shall nevertheless show the 
infinite attributes of God vividly por- 
trayed in His words, His deeds, and 
His experiences. In this apprehension 
of Him the Lord Jesus Christ is the 
very image of God begotten in the life 
of the human race during its spiritual 
history. By a humanity which God 
assumed from man in the spiritual un- 
folding of the race, and which in the 
form of an historical Man, could be 
brought within the field of human 
vision ; and by the divinely significant 

36 



Zbc ®nlB JBeQOtten Son 



life which that Man led on the earth, 
and still further by the record of that 
life in the Gospels, an image of God 
has been begotten and born in human 
history, and is forever fixed as an 
eternal Sun in man's spiritual sky, that 
He might through all time declare God 
whom no man hath seen. Jesus Christ 
is a vision of God stamped on the retina 
of the eye of the race of men by the 
light of divine truth during the ages of 
man's spiritual evolution ; He is the 
impress which God has made on man's 
racial consciousness. No other kind of 
Son could be born of God to be seen of 
men, and God can never be seen except 
through such a Son. Such a Son, in- 
deed, is the universal and only instru- 
mentality by which all things natural, 
spiritual, and divine are made known to 
man. '* No man hath seen God at any 
time ; the only begotten Son, which is 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
declared him." 



37 



IV, 

WITHOUT A PARABLE 
SPAKE HE NOT 

** All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude 
in parables ; and without a parable spake he not 
unto them." — Matthew xiii., 34 ; Mark iv., 34. 

IF Jesus Christ be the Son of God, 
begotten in the spiritual history of 
man, how may we be sure of that mo- 
mentous fact ? What is the evidence 
of His divine parentage, and in what 
language does He declare to the world 
His mission ? 

No outer testification as to the par- 
entage and mission of Jesus Christ will 
serve our purpose. The evidence of 
His sonship must be interior to all docu- 
mentary proofs ; it must be stronger 
than all the words men can utter. The 
claim that He is the only begotten is 
too tremendous to rest upon such 

38 



Mitbout a iparable Spake l)e not 



grounds. The conception which for so 
many ages dominated the Church that 
the miracles were an abundant witness 
of His mission, and which led to the 
putting forth of so many tomes on 
" Evidences " to demonstrate from his- 
torical laws of proof that Jesus Christ 
really did live, and especially that He 
really did the wonderful things record- 
ed of Him, no longer obtains among 
men. That kind of evidence will never 
again serve the purpose to which in 
mediaeval practice it was put. Even if 
the fact of the miracles be admitted, 
they do not prove that He who did 
them is the Son of God, nor even that 
His utterances are true. But more than 
this, the very idea of miracles under the 
ancient definition that they are suspen- 
sions of law, shocks the fundamental 
thought of the modern man as to the 
eternity of the universe and even of 
God Himself.^ 

' I would remind the reader that nowhere is it 
claimed in the New Testament that the miracles 

39 



^be Cbrlst ot (5oD 



In saying, however, that no outer 
testification would serve our purpose, I 
do not overlook a kind of external evi- 
dence that has, even to the modern 
thinker, a force in respect to a faith in 
Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and 
that is, the evidence to be gotten from 
the influence which that faith has shown 
in history. What the faith in Jesus 
Christ as the Son of God has been and 
w^hat it has done in the lives of men, 
has a vast significance. However like 
that of a mere man the Hfe of Jesus 
Christ may appear when considered by 
itself, when observed from its relation 
to the history of the race, it grandly 
looms up over the lives of all other 
spiritual leaders. Critics of the life of 
Jesus have often treated it as though it 
were for the first time made known, 
and were amenable to the same rules 

were a suspension of law. Regarded as manifes- 
tations of higher laws, or of laws whose operation 
has never before been observed, there is no inherent 
objection to them. 

40 



Mitbout a parable Spake Ibe not 



of judgment as such a life would be if 
just presented to the world. But the 
life of Jesus as we have it to-day is not 
a theory or an experiment. It has been 
tested through the ages, and must be 
considered by the side of the history of 
its influence in the world ; rather, that 
history is a part of the life itself, and it 
is when looked upon from this point of 
view that it is seen in all its grand pro- 
portions. When we contemplate the 
mighty religious drama, or series of 
dramas, for there are a number, enacted 
in the name of Christ during the last 
eighteen centuries, words fail to express 
the inadequacy of the external story of 
His life alone and, from any merely 
natural interpretation of it, to account 
for its effect ! The people among whom 
He appeared was one of the most ob- 
scure upon the earth. Politically His 
nation was insignificant. His own life 
is unknown in secular history. The 
circumstances related of Him are seem- 
ingly limited in import, being of a per- 



XLbc Cbrist of (3oD 



sonal rather than of a pubHc nature. 
The doctrines He taught and the ex- 
ample He set make no appeal to the 
natural ambitions of men. Yet the re- 
ligion which was founded on that life 
— the entire and only records of which 
can be read through in a few hours — 
has brought spiritual satisfaction and 
peace to countless multitudes of every 
diversity of disposition among men. 
It has held its position as the most 
enlightened of the world's religions 
through eighteen centuries, and it is to- 
day the most luminous and vital spirit- 
ual influence in the life of man. What 
is the meaning of this stupendous power 
in the life of Christ — a power trans- 
cending in marvellousness all the won- 
ders related of Him ? No miracle of 
His begins to be so amazing. 

Among matters of sense-observation, 
when an object may be looked upon at 
the same moment from widely separ- 
ated points of view, it means that what 
appears to our sight as small, is in real- 
42 



Mitbout a iparal)le Spalie 1be not 



ity very great. It shows us that the 
object is more extensive than it looks. 
It enlarges the thing over the appear- 
ance. And this is what the widely 
extended influence of a spiritual phe- 
nomenon tells us of its nature. It 
means that the spiritual import of what 
we see is greater than in its outer aspect 
it seems. As applied to the life of Jesus 
Christ, this means that there must be 
a spiritual significance within that Hfe 
commensurate with this vast influence. 

But however great the significance 
which the influence that His life as 
shown in history reveals, it is not suffi- 
cient by itself to lead one to accept 
Jesus Christ as the manifestation of God 
on earth ; it can only lead us to be affirm- 
atively disposed towards the accept- 
ance of a doctrine which has exhibited 
such mighty effects in the world as has 
this. 

The satisfactory proof of the only be- 
gotten sonship of Jesus Christ can con- 
sist in nothing less than in actually 



^be Cbriet of (3oD 



finding in Him the revelation of God 
and the salvation of man. 

But how shall we look for God in 
Christ? By what language does He 
declare Him ? Right here is the crucial 
question. By what language does Christ 
reveal God, and therefore for what kind 
of declaration shall we look? 

The language in which Jesus Christ 
as the Son of God declares to the world 
His divine Father, must be in the first 
place a universal language, and in the 
second place its message must be to 
man's soul. '' God is a Spirit." All 
revelation of God must be to man's 
spirit.^ There is but one language 
which meets these two essential re- 
quirements, and that is the language of 

' Science, from the very nature of its field of opera- 
tion, which is to observe, collect, and classify facts, 
and organize the knowledge thence derived, can 
never be the source of a direct revelation of spiritual 
truth to man. What science gathers religion may 
make use of, but science can never itself enter into 
the field of religious thought. It forever belongs 
exclusively to the plane of natural conceptions. 

44 



TRUitbout a parable Spahe fbc not 



the parable. The parable is the uni- 
versal tongue which is addressed to 
every possible human being, and has 
been used in all ages for the expression 
of what is spiritual. Being both natural 
and spiritual, it joins the two. It is 
natural because addressed to the senses ; 
and it is at the same time spiritual be- 
cause its meaning is addressed to the 
soul. In interpreting the phenomena 
of spiritual things, the laws of the para- 
ble are what the laws of perspective are 
in interpreting the phenomena of na- 
ture. As under the last we know that 
trifling features in the appearance of 
distant objects of sense signify great 
natural answering realities — such as 
enormous spaces, vast dimensions, 
mighty masses; so in the natural im- 
ages of spiritual things, their varied 
features, whatever their seeming natu- 
ral import, may possess an infinitude of 
spiritual significance — such as heavenly 
love, divine wisdom, infinite power. As 
applied to the life of Jesus Christ this 



Cbe Cbrf0t of (5oD 



means that by spiritual interpretation, 
and by that alone, can we behold Him 
as a declaration of God addressed to 
man's soul. To the symbolic interpre- 
tation of His life must we look to find 
the complete realization of our effort to 
discover in Him the greatness of God. 
Such interpretation is able to infinitize 
His life. Under that may His appear- 
ance of personal limitation be made to 
disappear. Thus understood, the indi- 
vidual deeds of Jesus Christ are individ- 
ual only to him who receives their bene- 
fits. To all others they are expressions 
of divine truths, universal in their appli- 
cation, but capable of becoming indi- 
vidual with anyone who takes them 
into his life. When Jesus gave sight to 
blind Bartimeus, however personally im- 
portant this act may have been to Bar- 
timeus himself, He did what as a mere 
fact is of little moment to the world 
with its countless thousands of blind 
folk who are never healed. Taking the 
story in its mere appearance, we learn 
46 



IRHitbout a parable Spa?ie Ibe not 



that a certain poor blind man through 
the power of Jesus Christ received his 
sight a couple of thousand years or so 
ago. What then ? In its mere external 
fact, little then. Medical practice has 
seemingly as wonderful instances of tri- 
umph. But interpreting the story under 
the law of the parable, we find within 
and above a truth exceeding all limita- 
tions as to personality of application. 
We see in it in such case not a mere 
tale of a local and temporal event in the 
Palestine of long ago, but a revelation 
of an attribute of our divine Father. 
This is the form which the all-illuminat- 
ing wisdom of God takes to make known 
to us that from Him flows a healing 
power for the cure of everyone groping 
in the darkness of ignorance and error, 
that is, in spiritual blindness. This is a 
truth belonging to every person every- 
where and in all ages who is conscious 
of his inability to see the truth, which 
is the light of heaven, but who longs 
for it and applies to God as revealed in 

47 



^be Cbrfst of (3oD 



Jesus Christ for relief — for every such a 
one is a Bartimeus — to him is this story- 
addressed and of him does it speak. 

Parabolic interpretation, too, lifts our 
understanding of what we read of Jesus 
Christ above all the limitations of time. 
We cease to think of Him merely as 
THEN, and behold Him also in the only 
way in which it is proper to think of 
God, and that is as NOW. If Jesus Christ 
be God, whatever the form in which He 
appeared before the eyes of men at the 
time when they beheld Him in outer 
image, the meaning of that form must 
be above all time. All the events of 
the life of Jesus Christ, if we interpret 
the story from this new conception of 
Him, represents God's relation to His 
people at every moment of their his- 
tory. 

Again, this interpretation of the story 
of Jesus Christ lifts Him out of our con- 
ceptions of space as well as out of those 
of time. We cease to think of Him as 
especially there, and behold Him in 
48 



Mitbout a parable Spafte 1be not 



the only way in which it is proper to 
think of God, and that is as HERE, and 
as everywhere. His life and acts cease 
to be limited to Palestine. It is here 
and everywhere that all things related 
of Him may take place. 

And still further parabolic interpreta- 
tion lifts Him above all the vicissitudes 
of change. The variations to which He 
appears subject convey special concep- 
tions of the divine attributes and ac- 
complish some special degree of accom- 
modation to the weakness of man, but 
do not represent a changeability in God. 
From all these limitations the life of 
Jesus Christ is set free if we only inter- 
pret it under the laws of the parable. 

But a strange misapprehension and 
thence a deep-rooted prejudice obtains 
among men concerning the use of sym- 
bolism. To many it seems to make 
visionary and shadovv^y the thing to 
which it is applied. Though it is ad- 
mitted by all that the soul is of infinite- 
ly more importance than the body ; that 



XLbc Cbrl6t of (5ot> 



to save the soul was the very act of re- 
demption — the coming of God to man, 
the only thing for the sake of which the 
whole drama was enacted ; and though 
the symbolic interpretation of the life 
of Christ shows that His relation is 
supremely to the soul and its interests, 
yet symbolism ever remains in the 
minds of such persons as among the 
unreal things of life, the imaginary and 
empty fantasies of the mind. 

But all this arises from a misappre- 
hension. True symbolism is not the 
relation of a shadowy mental concep- 
tion to a substance called a symbol. It 
should not for a moment be thought 
of as a merely figurative signification 
given to that which is in itself real, as a 
sort of artificial addition, an imaginary 
attachment to it. Rather, symbolism is 
the recognition of the attributes of nat- 
ural objects as derived from the im- 
press of a life which transcends the 
bodily senses — as stamps made upon 
the grosser and less real things of the 



TWlitbout a parable Spafte 1be not 



body by the finer and more real things 
of the soul. As applied to the life of 
Jesus, such an interpretation is the rec- 
ognition of Him and His life as an ex- 
hibition of God in the life of man, an 
exhibition to be symbohcally inter- 
preted simply because the symbol is the 
universal and the only form in which 
spiritual things can be made to appear 
before the eye. Careful distinction 
should be made between symbolism 
adopted by man as an instrument for 
the illustration of an idea, and symbol- 
ism as expressing the relation between 
God and His impress upon the world. 
To make a symbolic use of an object or 
of an event as a matter of convenience 
of language is a wholly different thing 
from recognizing the divine principle 
that God's truth in man's life reveals 
itself in symbolic form. The one is like 
the picture which an artist makes of an 
ideal landscape, and the other is like 
the impress which a veritable landscape 
itself makes upon the screen of a camera 



Zbc Gbiist of (3oD 



obscura. In the former case the picture 
is the reality — it exists in material sub- 
stances, being constituted of canvas and 
of colored pigments ; while the land- 
scape is an appearance only, it is a sense- 
suggestion which is made to the eye of 
him who looks upon the picture from a 
certain point of view and in a certain 
light. The landscape in such case is 
only the conception of a landscape, de- 
rived from the work of art, and thus 
given a quasi reality. But in the latter 
case the landscape is the reality. It 
exists in earth and air and cloud and 
water; while it is the picture that is 
the shadow, that has only the quasi 
reality. It is thus when we give a sym- 
bolic interpretation to revelation ; spirit- 
ual truth is then the reality, it is a divine 
force making an impress upon man, 
while the symbol is only the form of 
the impress which the truth has made. 
This is illustrated, too, by many of 
our own familiar laws in accordance 
with which our souls express themselves 

52 



•QClitbout a parable Spafte IDe not 



through our bodies. When a passion 
enters a man's soul it may express it- 
self in his face and actions. These ex- 
pressions, whether they be smiles or 
tears, the contortions of the face, or the 
positions and actions of the body, must 
be symbolically interpreted in order to 
be rightly understood. The smiles must 
not be looked upon as consisting of 
certain muscular contractions, but as 
representing certain affectional states ; 
the tears, not as consisting of certain 
physical activities and convulsions, but 
as the expressions of m^ental emotions. 
And every other special physical action 
must be interpreted as meaning some 
corresponding attribute or condition of 
the spirit. But in all these interpreta- 
tions, the expressions of the face and 
the postures of the body are only the 
forms the passion assumes. Passion is 
the reality of man's experience in such 
case ; the actions of the body, flesh and 
blood though it be, are only the shadow. 
In giving a symbolic interpretation 

53 



Zbc Qbxiet ot (5oD 



to the life of Jesus Christ, the Galilaen 
should not be looked upon as a man 
who so lived that we can get an illustra- 
tion of certain spiritual ideas, even a 
conception of divine things from His 
life ; rather the divine things imaged in 
Him are God, who in descending into 
the spiritual life of man and revealing 
Himself in history took upon Himself 
the form of Jesus Christ. The sub- 
stance of Jesus Christ is not the Man 
of Sorrows whose form we look upon ; 
rather that form is as a vision whose 
answering reality, whose substance is 
God. The Gospel tales may be regard- 
ed as sense-impressions revealing to the 
consciousness of the race the incarna- 
tion of God in the life of man. 

To many the symbolic interpretation 
of the Hfe of Jesus Christ seems to de- 
stroy the reality of the man. They 
miss the delight of that natural and 
personal conception of Him which has 
in the past been such a comfort. They 
hunger for the historical person with 

54 



Mitbout a iparable Spake 1be not 



whom they have loved to dwell in imag- 
ination as they have pictured Him in 
His walks and His discourses in the 
Holy Land. 

But why should the destruction of 
this natural conception follow ? What 
we know is that we have in the New 
Testament story a surpassing concep- 
tion of God given in the form of a 
marvellous drama to be interpreted un- 
der the laws of the parable. What 
history has taught us is that that con- 
ception, though often received with 
infinite distortions, has for eighteen 
centuries and more been the most stu- 
pendous of all spiritual powers on earth. 
In these so mighty, so elevating, so cer- 
tain, and so complemental truths we 
may well rest in spiritual content. 

But if one would ask further how un- 
der spiritual interpretation he is to think 
of the natural and historical life of Jesus 
Christ, I reply that I do not see that 
the interpretation of His life as an ex- 
pression of the attributes of God, given 

55 



XLbc Cbcist ot (BoD 



in the terms of parable, need eliminate 
His earthly life, or destroy His body of 
flesh. God works by means, not by 
magic. In the life of Jesus Christ He 
has revealed Himself ; that we know. 
More than this, we know that His in- 
carnation in a divinely representative 
life on earth is as rigidly under the laws 
of order as is the commonest phenome- 
non of our earthly experience. By or- 
derly means, natural, spiritual, and di- 
vine, the Original of this story has ap- 
peared before the eyes of man. And 
since under the laws of order He has 
appeared, why should we hesitate to 
think of Him in a natural form, in flesh 
and blood ? What do we know of flesh 
and blood, and what of matter, that we 
can predicate what can or what cannot 
be wrought out of its substances ? Let 
us emphasize our ignorance. No one 
knows what matter is. The greater 
number of the properties we assign to 
it are the unprovable inferences we 
have drawn from the impressions it 

56 



Mitbout a ipacable Spafte 1be not 



has made upon our senses; and the 
very most significant of its innumerable 
properties is its infinite variation of 
form according to its elemental com- 
position, and according to the living 
forces by which it is moulded. What 
new, and at present inconceivable, prop- 
erties matter may exhibit when formed 
in some as yet undiscovered chemical 
combination, or when wrought by the 
power of some as yet unknown life 
force, who can tell? How especially 
can we know what would be the natural 
possibilities of an earthly life, or what 
the properties of a flesh wrought by 
the infinite life forces of God incar- 
nating Himself in man? 

To the eye of spiritual rationality, 
however, the question of the Lord's 
natural life, and the external and his- 
torical interpretation we should give to 
it, is subordinate to the question of the 
spiritual meaning which is contained in 
this New Testament story as it is ad- 
dressed to us to-day. The message it 



Ubc Cbriet ot (BoD 



brings is of vital concern to us at this 
moment, while the question of the na- 
ture and the quality of its historic fact 
is secondary. If the story of Jesus 
gives us a vision of God, how trans- 
cendently important that we have the 
spiritual advantage of it ! What are the 
natural laws in accordance with which 
this Man has appeared, and the record 
of His sayings and doings has been 
written, are for subsequent study. The 
spiritual meaning of the life of Jesus 
Christ, like the meaning of a book, is 
the source of its whole import ; while 
our natural thought of this historic 
story, like the question of tire person- 
ality of the author of a book, or of the 
mechanics of its manufacture, is a 
deeply interesting, but not the essential, 
question. 

Nor do these two questions interfere 
with each other. Our belief in the 
symbolic interpretation of the life of 
Jesus Christ need not disturb our be- 
lief in whatever natural interpretation 

58 



IKaitbout a parable Spa?ie Ibe not 



should prove true ; nor need our belief 
in any natural interpretation of the 
New Testament story, which may prove 
true, disturb our faith in the spiritual 
significance of that divine life on earth. 
Whether Jesus should be looked upon 
as a material, flesh-and-blood, historical 
man, as He has been regarded in the 
Church ; or as a representative vision of 
God seen in the spiritual world by the 
opening of the spiritual senses of the 
writers of the New Testament, and re- 
ported by them as though seen in this 
world ; or whether the story should be 
received as a parable of God and of His 
relation to man, dictated from heaven 
to the New Testament writers ; or 
whether the life of Jesus Christ as a 
historical phenomenon should be ex- 
plained in some other way, the spiritual 
meaning is of supreme import, and is 
undisturbed by any conclusions we may 
arrive at concerning the natural reality 
of the facts of this divine history. 
The whole purpose of the coming of 

59 



Zbc Cbrist of (3oD 



the ** only begotten Son " was to de- 
clare God and bring salvation to the 
world. It follows, therefore, that with 
each person the interpretation of the 
life of Jesus Christ which gives him the 
most living, the most forcible, and the 
most saving conception of God ; which 
most powerfully makes God a realized 
presence in his soul for good ; which 
most efficiently leads the man to shun 
his evils as sins, to triumph in tempta- 
tion, and through looking to Him to ac- 
tualize in his own life the charity which 
Christ enjoins, and which thus practi- 
cally makes Jesus Christ to be * Emman- 
uel," *' God with us," is for him the true 
interpretation, even when accompanied 
with misconceptions of the earthly life 
of Jesus. For the conception of Jesus 
Christ whose truth is shown by its 
bringing the love and wisdom of God 
into the life of man, is true by a higher 
kind of truth than is the conception 
which is true from its agreement with 
the facts of history. A misconception 
60 



■QClitbout a iparable Spafte 1bc not 



of the facts is not so hurtful as is a mis- 
conception of the truths they embody. 
And this, were the facts unquestioned. 
But some know not what to think of 
the Hteral story as such. For all such 
this principle of the non-essentialness of 
any special natural conception of the 
life of Jesus, obtains. 

Turning from the apparent objections 
which may be raised against the spiritual 
interpretation of the life of Jesus Christ 
to its advantages, we may in such an 
understanding of Him behold Him as 
veritably our God. Thus interpreted, 
He at once assumes divine proportions. 
Not more radically does our under- 
standing of a star which we had re- 
garded as a lamp burst its limitations 
when we discover that it is a sun, than 
does this simple life expand into in- 
finitude before our eyes when we in 
this way see God in every act and word 
of Jesus Christ. Time ceases to limit 
the story. The Gospel is telling of 
God in the hearts of men at this in- 



XLbc dbrist of <5o& 



stant. Space is annihilated, for it is 
God everywhere who is described in 
this carpenter's life. Personalism is done 
away with, for it is Christ in the life of 
you, of me, and of every one that the 
revelation treats. Thus interpreted our 
spiritual sky is drawn aside, and the in- 
finite things of God are seen in the place 
of what seemed to be but an impene- 
trable veil before our spiritual vision. 

But does the life of Jesus Christ bear 
this interpretation? When we read of 
Him and of all that He did and said, do 
we find a spiritual meaning in His his- 
tory ? Does the symbolic method prac- 
tically apply to Him ? If so, how can 
the various seemingly undivine relation- 
ships which He has sustained to man on 
earth be accepted as visions of the Son 
of God ? How shall we understand the 
humiliating features of His life? How 
can such things as His prayer to God be 
understood in one who under the inter- 
pretation of the parable is the very mani- 
festation of God Himself ? And is He 
62 



Mitbout a {parable Spake 1bc not 



not our Saviour? What is redemption 
under symbolic interpretation? And 
how can He reveal the glory of God 
from His non-glorious life? In a word, 
as thus interpreted, what shall be our 
understanding of the limitations of 
Jesus Christ and of the salvation He 
wrought, and where is the glory He 
brought forth to view ? 

I am well aware that the doctrine that 
the life of Jesus Christ, if we look for 
God in Him, will actually be found to 
be a Parable of God is thus far an as- 
sumption. Whether the story actually 
responds to such an interpretation can 
only be demonstrated by making the 
examination ; and he who seeks God 
revealed in the symbolic interpretation 
of the life of Christ will surely find Him 
there to his own boundless spiritual 
comfort. He will find in the transcen- 
dent love which Jesus exhibits a sur- 
passing image in human form of the love 
of God. The divine Father is to be 
thought of as moved in His own infin- 
63 



^be Cbrist of (5oD 



ite degree by a love whose tenderness 
and unselfishness are finlted to our com- 
prehension in the love of Jesus Christ. 
The wisdom of those incomparable dis- 
courses, to obey which leads man to the 
supreme heights of spiritual living, can 
be received as a limited, a veritable 
man-shaped and man-sized picture of 
the wisdom of God. And in the deeds 
of mercy of Jesus Christ, in His acts of 
healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, 
feeding the hungry, freeing those 
possessed by evil spirits, and calming 
the sea, we have visions revealing to us 
in comprehensible adaptations to our 
understanding, the attributes of the 
power of God, which is ever in like man- 
ner operating in the life of man to 
redeem him from his spiritual evils. 
Every event in the life of Jesus Christ 
thus interpreted will bring to light the 
working of God in man's own life, and 
through that illumination he will find 
God, not afar off, but close by, even at 
the centre of his own being. 

64 



•QClitbout a iparable Spafte 1be not 



The detailed treatment of that divine 
history is beyond the scope of my pres- 
ent work. I will content myself with 
presenting further only some of the 
general principles which everyone 
should observe as through the symbol 
he is seeking God in Jesus Christ. 



65 



V. 

DESPISED AND REJECTED 

*' When we shall see him, there is no beauty that 
we should desire him." — Isaiah liii., 2. 

THE natural man finds his every an- 
ticipation as to what a revelation 
from God should be, violated by the 
doctrine that Jesus Christ is He. Is 
not God omnipotent? he asks. But 
where is the omnipotence of this Man? 
Is not God the King of kings ? But 
where is the royalty of Jesus Christ? 

But in the spiritual apprehension of 
the subject certain laws of tremendous 
import, generally unknown or ignored, 
make the image in which God appears 
before the eyes of men the reverse of 
all natural anticipation. 

As a first principle, it should never be 

66 



Despised anD TRejecteD 



forgotten that the worldly greatness or 
insignificance of Him who claims to be 
the Son of God has in itself no weight 
whatever in determining whether that 
claim be true, thus whether He be 
adapted to bring a worthy conception 
of God and thence God Himself to the 
thought, the life, and the affections of 
man. As in a work of art the size of 
the work does not determine its artistic 
value, but the quality of the artist's con- 
ception and the perfection with which 
it is made visible, so the external great- 
ness of God's Son has no bearing on the 
question as to whether or not He is in 
very truth His Son. 

Like every other spiritual principle 
this is illustrated by a corresponding 
natural law. In revealing itself to man 
the whole realm of nature is limited to 
a circle of about three quarters of an 
inch in diameter at the back of his eye, 
within whose tiny boundaries must be 
displayed all its beauty and its grandeur. 
Yet small as this space is, under the 

67 



Zbc Cbrist ot (5o£> 



law for the interpretation of sense-im- 
pressions, it is ample. Equally does 
this law apply in the revelation of 
spiritual things. The image in man 
through which God is presented is nec- 
essarily as limited as man is limited. 
But this limitation has no significance 
whatever as indicating a similar limita- 
tion in God whose Son is in this way 
presented to us. Interpretation can 
give infinite proportions to what is re- 
vealed in the very tiniest image. Going 
out-of-doors on a clear evening we see 
above our heads what appear to be 
little dots of fire — appearances often 
less striking than the street lamps near 
by. But these insignificant-looking 
sparks are the images in which the in- 
finitudes of God's universe are revealed 
to us. Those infinitesimal-appearing 
things are suns and worlds. Interpre- 
tation has taught us what they are. 
But what interpretation has done for 
the phenomena of nature, it can do for 
the phenomena of religion as well. 
68 



^espiseD anD IRejecteD 



However limited may appear this only 
begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, that 
seeming limitation is only from the 
limitation of man's capacity to repro- 
duce an image of God. Interpretation 
can give divine proportions to that life 
naturally so restricted, the extent of 
which will be limited only by our 
capacity for understanding God. 

To many it seems as if we had in the 
scenery of nature the most effective 
imagery in which to clothe a revelation 
of God. But while the things of nature 
do represent to men ideas of certain 
divine attributes, as a representation of 
God in any full and complete sense, 
especially in His relation to man, they 
are wholly inadequate. We could 
hardly delude ourselves with a greater 
fallacy than to assign to the scenery of 
nature so pre-eminent a function. The 
majesty of the mountains and the im- 
pressiveness of the ocean — while con- 
veying to the beholder a conception of 
divine power and a corresponding sense 
69 



XLbe Cbrfst of (5oO 



of his own littleness, and some other 
ideas of God — lack this first essential of 
that which would represent God in a 
plenary way, inherent quality ; for their 
power to represent God is derived from 
the resultant effect of their combination 
of parts, and not from the interior 
quality of their constitution. A moun- 
tain is only an accumulation of pebbles, 
or a massing of rocks and earth, which 
when considered in detail, or in small 
quantities, suggest nothing more divine 
than what pertains to every commonest 
object of sense. In fact the impressive- 
ness of the mountain is only the effect 
of its image begotten in the eye, and 
represents nothing whatever really per- 
taining to the mountain. This is to be 
considered as a mere dead thing which, 
if it gives us a conception of God at all, 
does so because arousing in us a senti- 
ment which has its origin in our own 
hearts. A rose-bush because it is on a 
higher plane of creative expression, 
represents the life of God more truly 
70 



2>e6pf0eD anD tRejectcD 



than do the very Himalaya Mountains, 
and a man as an expression of God is 
greater than all the mountains of the 
earth. 

Instead of great dead things, or 
things, however big, of low organic 
structure being best adapted to give 
man a conception of God, He must be 
represented by that which from its in- 
herent quality and in its veriest detail 
expresses Him. An adequate repre- 
sentation of God must express divinity 
to its finger-tips, so that a single particle 
of it will show His attributes. Such an 
expression can be given in a way to 
reach us efificiently only in the highest 
terms of creative manifestation. As 
we look out into the world we find crea- 
tion exhibited in grades. Lowest is 
the mineral, above that is the vegetable, 
then the animal, and high above the 
animal is man. God is infinitely above 
all. Where should we look logically 
for an adequate expression of Him other 
than in the highest of His creations, in 

71 



^be Cbrist ot (5o& 



man ? God cannot be most efficiently 
expressed in minerals however great be 
their masses, since minerals are the 
very lowest things of nature ; nor in the 
vegetable, which is the very humblest 
expression of an appearance of life ; nor 
yet in the mere animal, which possesses 
no moral life, and is inferior to man. 
If God would reveal himself to us as a 
Being above us, He must construct the 
form in which He would make Himself 
known out of the very highest and the 
best of the things which He has made, 
and the very height of all that He has 
made, which has come within the field 
of our vision, is character. This is the 
surpassing pearl compared with which 
all other things sink into insignifiance. 
Mountains and oceans, the forests and 
all the glories of vegetation, and all 
other works of nature, are relatively as 
nothing when compared with the glory 
and the honor which pertain to heavenly 
character, the inestimable possible pos- 
session of a man. If God would with 

72 



S)e6pf6eD anD IRejectcD 



the greatest efficiency present Himself 
before our eyes, in the terms of human 
character He has the supreme language 
for His purpose. It is true that before 
God appeared as a man the insignia of 
nature were made to serve His purpose, 
and in the thunders of Sinai He made 
himself known to the Jews. But this 
was only a suggestion of His power ; it 
was not a manifestation of Himself ; it 
could not draw man's heart to Him. 
God is after man's heart. Nothing less 
than the very best love we can be in- 
duced to give Him will satisfy Him, 
and this love is not called forth by any 
less an exhibition of God than that dis- 
played in a man — in Jesus Christ. 

Some have supposed that even if rep- 
resented by a man, that man must be 
free from every even seeming weakness, 
wholly above being affected by the 
machinations of wicked men, and with 
a nature infinitely self-contained, in or- 
der to represent God. 

But if one would rightly interpret 



Zhc Cbrist of ©oD 



the life of Jesus Christ in the light of 
the doctrine that He is the " only be- 
gotten Son,'* he must never forget that 
the Son of God, in the form in which 
He can appear before the eyes of man, 
cannot represent God as He is in Him- 
self. As He is in Himself God trans- 
cends every possible apprehension of 
man. *' No man hath seen God at any 
time." God as He is in Himself was 
never a babe, nor a boy twelve years 
of age, nor a man of sorrows. It is 
God as He is in man's life that is repre- 
sented by these degrees in the growth 
of Jesus Christ. It is the hold that we 
have given God in our hearts that is the 
subject of temptation, of sorrow, that 
is persecuted, suffers, is crucified and 
rises from the dead, and redeems us 
from our sins. No true judgment con- 
cerning the divine nature of Jesus 
Christ, nor any satisfactory law for the 
interpretation of His life as the " only 
begotten Son " of God, is possible ex- 
cept in the light of this principle de- 

74 



2)e6pi6eD auD IRejecteD 



fining the meaning of the doctrine that 
Jesus Christ is God. 

The image in which God reveals him- 
self to man's eyes must be according to 
the position which He actually occu- 
pies in man's heart. Such image, there- 
fore, is necessarily the representation of 
the glory or the shame of the place 
man has given the attributes of God in 
his hfe. If man should make divine 
love his king, that is, should make the 
laws of divine love the laws of his con- 
duct among men, doubtless God in ap- 
pearing to him in such case would 
assume the form of outer royalty. But 
when man places self-love first, and the 
love of God last, thus holding divine 
things in contempt, and making all that 
is spiritual in himself weak and miser- 
able until it cries in distress for help, 
then must the Son of God, that " image 
of the invisible God " begotten in hu- 
man history to reveal God, in Scripture 
language '' to declare Him," in like 
manner appear in obscurity and con- 

75 



Zbc Cbrist of 0oD 

tempt. For if before the eyes of such 
a man the Son presented himself as out- 
wardly powerful and prosperous, He 
would represent God as possessing the 
passions and selfishness which power 
and prosperity in such a state of man's 
life would signify. Therefore according 
as man is spiritually distorted, corre- 
spondingly distorted must appear the 
image of God before his eyes. 

At the time of the advent of God 
into the life of man in the person of 
Jesus Christ, the world was at its fur- 
thest distance from the divine Father. 
All spiritual conceptions were as things 
despised. A divine entrance into such 
a state of degradation could show itself 
only in a form humble, a form not such 
as the natural man could desire. The 
poverty, the sorrow, the obscurity, and 
the weakness of the outer life of the 
Son of God were from the debased 
spiritual conditions of mankind at that 
time. Yet that is necessarily the very 
time in man's history in which the Lord 

76 



Wcepisc^ anD IRejecteD 



can appear in external imagery. Only 
to a people in which religion had be- 
come so externalized that it consisted 
wholly in mere acts of the body could 
God reveal himself in bodily form. 
Since He could not appeal to their 
spiritual perceptions, He appealed to 
their bodily senses. When there are 
no children to respond, the very stones 
cry out. Presenting himself to the Jews, 
the Son must represent God according 
to the position which had actually been 
given the attributes of God by that peo- 
ple ; but since every man, in every age 
of the world, at the beginning of his 
regeneration, is spiritually like the Jews, 
Christ by this same presentation repre- 
sents God for every individual as well. 
But the power of Christ in removing 
infirmities, and the glory of His prom- 
ises to His disciples, represent the re- 
deeming power of His truth when 
received into the life, and the position 
He should hold in the lives of those 
who receive Him within. 

77 



tTbe Gbrist of (5oD 



In His life on earth Jesus Christ 
passed through many variations of state 
between the manger, the cross, and the 
resurrection. These represent varying 
states in man's reception of God. God 
in man's life is at one time as a babe, or 
a young child ; at another He is Christ 
tempted and suffering, wrestling with 
doubt, and with the attacks of man's 
own self-love ; again He is Christ heal- 
ing from sickness, and still again God 
in man is Christ rising from the tomb. 

A man is apt to be consciously most 
moved by the contemplation of that 
stage of the life of Christ which most 
nearly represents the stage of God's 
progress in his own heart. The tre- 
mendous emphasis which has been 
placed on the crucifixion instead of on 
other and equally significant events of 
the life of Christ, would appear to indi- 
cate a state of the Church in which 
God, — that is, man's consciousness of 
God, — was being crucified. The Church 
of Rome seems to illustrate this princi- 

78 



2)e6pi0eD anD IRejecteD 



pie in its worship of the infant Jesus 
and of the Madonna. As the Mother 
represents the Church, is it not more 
than a coincidence that the Babe and 
the Mother should be especially wor- 
shipped in that division of the Church 
which is most strikingly characterized 
by an infantile conception of God, and 
in which the Church is so glorified ? A 
like principle seems to have influenced 
the artists of the Renaissance, who so 
often picture Christ in His sufTerings. 
Was not God's hold on the hearts of 
the men of that artistic but profligate 
age rightly represented by a man in 
terrible distress? 

But as the apprehension of God by 
man will grow in the coming states of 
the Church, the more glorious aspects 
of the life of Jesus Christ will come to 
be known as never before. In the com- 
ing Church, Christ as described by John 
in the Apocalypse will be the represen- 
tative of the conception of God which 
man will behold in worship : " In the 

79 



zrbe Cbrist of (5oD 



midst of the seven golden candlesticks 
was one like unto the Son of Man, 
clothed with a garment down to the 
feet, and girt about the paps with a 
golden girdle. His head and his hairs 
were white like wool, as white as snow ; 
and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 
and his feet like unto fine brass, as if 
they burned in a furnace, and his voice 
as the sound of many waters. And he 
had in his right hand seven stars : and 
out of his mouth went a sharp two- 
edged sword : and his countenance was 
as the sun shineth in his strength." 

Guided by these principles we may 
banish from our thoughts every idea 
that there is any lack in the life of 
Jesus Christ that will make Him less 
than the '' only begotten " Son of God, 
and thus as the " image of the invisible 
God," and thence as God. As the 
image of a love and a wisdom that are 
divine, and of a quality inherent in 
Himself, as exhibiting an infinitely sur- 
passing divine and human character, 
80 



2)espf0eD anJ) IRejecteD 



magnificently lovely and grand, and 
forever above us, Jesus Christ meets 
every requirement for being the Son of 
God in the very supremest form man is 
capable of receiving in his organs of 
vision. 



VI. 

HE SHALL SAVE HIS 
PEOPLE 

" Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall 
save his people from their sins." Matthew i., 21. 

IN the history of the marvellous power 
which the life of Jesus Christ has 
exerted in the spiritual evolution of 
man, no service of His to men has more 
wonderfully moved them than that of 
Saviour, and to none have they more per- 
sistently clung. The word " Saviour " 
expresses that divine attribute which 
brings Him closest to us, and reveals 
the supreme purpose of His coming. 
And yet the misunderstanding of no 
feature of the life of Jesus Christ has 
been more destructive of the larger 
understanding of Him and of His truth 
82 



De Sball Save Ibts people 



than has the interpretation which the 
Church has given His saviourhood. 

It could not be otherwise than that 
a governmental scheme of salvation 
should have been read into the Bible 
during that period in the history of the 
Church when God was universally con- 
ceived of as being like an absolute 
earthly monarch. For nearly a thou- 
sand years it was the orthodox doctrine 
that Jesus Christ was a sacrifice to the 
devil. Then came an interpretation of 
salvation which has lasted among the 
conservative bodies of the Church to 
the present time. According to this, 
Jesus became the Saviour of man by 
suffering in his stead the penalty of a 
violated law ; divine law was of the 
nature of a legal enactment, being pro- 
mulgated as the edict of God ; sin is its 
violation ; punishment the prescribed 
penalty of the law ; forgiveness the re- 
mission of its penalty to culprits con- 
demned under it, and redemption is the 
sacrifice to meet the requirements of 
83 



Zbc Gbrlat of (3oD 



the broken law without punishing the 
guilty ones, and thus to enable God to 
remit the penalty of its violation with- 
out ignoring His own dignity and the 
dignity of the law. The whole idea is 
legal and technical, and thus an affair 
of the courts ; Jesus is a legal advocate 
and a proposed vicarial substitute, and 
God the Father is the Judge. Such an 
interpretation of the mission of Jesus 
Christ as man's Saviour, makes the 
disruption of our spiritual sky as a 
firmament impossible. It is too man- 
centered, too limited and local, too 
Ptolemaic. 

It is true that many individual Chris- 
tians and some denominations do not 
hold to this interpretation. Various 
theories as to salvation's being wrought 
through Christ's example, and as to 
whether or not He be in any special 
sense the Son of God, or only a good 
man whose remarkable life and teach- 
ings have influenced men for their good, 
have been put forth and have found ad- 

84 



Ibe Sball Save Ibis people 



herents. But all such theories, while 
escaping the irrationality and the cruelty 
of the early conceptions of redemption, 
lack their virility, and fail to meet the 
intenser hunger of man for a Saviour 
who shall be a Saviour indeed. 

In the place of such teachings as these 
we surely need a new interpretation of 
Jesus Christ as our Saviour. The 
doctrine of salvation should give us a 
conception of God as our Saviour com- 
mensurate with our conception of God 
as the Creator. Where can such a doc- 
trine be found ? On every page of the 
Scripture when we give what is said of 
the redemption which Jesus accom- 
plished the same spirituality and uni- 
versality of interpretation as that which 
enables us to see God in Jesus Christ. 
We must understand Jesus Christ as 
Saviour in the same way as we under- 
stand Him as a revelation of God. 

Turning with this thought to the 
Scripture, we find that both in the Old 
Testament prophecies concerning the 

85 



^be Cbri6t of (3oD 



Messiah, and in the New Testament 
stories of Jesus, He is presented as 
man's Saviour, and His work as Re- 
deemer is described. Both tell of a 
crisis in the spiritual state of man, and 
of God the Redeemer as a mighty Com- 
batant overcoming for man's salvation. 
Picture after picture of God as in this 
way man's Redeemer is presented to 
us throughout the Old Testament. He 
is called a " man of war," and in Isaiah 
a conflict which He wages with the 
numberless hosts of man's enemies, 
that threaten to overwhelm him, is de- 
scribed. " The Lord's hand is not short- 
ened that it cannot save." *' He saw 
that there was no man, and wondered 
that there was no intercessor : there- 
fore his arm brought salvation unto 
him, and his righteousness, it sustained 
him." ' Still more definitely in the 
New Testament we have the declara- 
tion of Jesus Christ concerning a judg- 
ment which was then executed upon 

' Isaiah lix., i, i6. 
86 



Ibe Sball Save ibis people 



the wicked. " I saw Satan," He says, 
" as lightning fall from heaven." " Now 
is the judgment of this world : now 
shall the prince of this world be cast 
out." *' Be of good cheer, I have over- 
come the world." ^ Elsewhere in the 
Scripture this judgment is compared 
to stupendous convulsions of nature,^ 
and again to a harvest,^ and is called 
in the discourses of Jesus, the " con- 
summation of the age " — unfortunately 
in our common version mistranslated 
" end of the world." The Genesis 
story of the flood evidently represents 
such a spiritual crisis, as also does the 
Lord's bringing the children of Israel 
out of Egypt. From all these things it 

* Luke X., i3 ; John xii., 31 ; xvi., 33. 

^ Isaiah xiii., 10 ; Joel ii., 10, 30-31. [It is re- 
markable how literalists have insisted on interpreting 
these passages according to their material sense 
when Peter at the day of Pentecost actually referred 
to this prediction in Joel, and declared that in the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that day, it was at 
that very time fulfilled — Acts ii., 19, 20] ; Joel iii., 
15 ; Matt, xxiv., 29 ; Rev. vi., 12-14. 

2 Joel iii., 13 ; Matt, xviii., 39 ; Rev. xiv., 15. 

87 



XLbc Gbrist of (3o& 



may be seen that the doctrine of man's 
need of a Saviour, and of salvation, is 
the doctrine of a great crisis in the 
spiritual affairs of man ; of the presence 
of the Lord at that crisis, and the ex- 
ecution of a judgment. When from 
the accumulation of evil in man's 
spiritual evolution, evil predominates 
and the possibility of the salvation of 
the individual is threatened, there is a 
judgment, and through great spiritual 
convulsions the conditions in the spir- 
itual world and thence among men, 
through the continuance of which evil 
prevails, are changed, and freedom re- 
stored. Such upheavals take place in 
earthly history, as in the French Revo- 
lution ; and such a judgment must have 
taken place at the coming of Jesus 
Christ,^ constituting in fact the great 
redemption which He accomplished. 

' " I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven"; 
" Now is the judgment of this world : now shall 
the prince of this world be cast out." Luke x. , i8 ; 
John xii., 31. 



1bc Sball Save Ibis people 



How Jesus Christ is man's Saviour is 
most livingly displayed before our eyes 
in the New Testament account of Him, 
for it is as man's Saviour that He is 
here especially described. It is not nec- 
essary to go back to some Garden of 
Eden transgression for a ground for 
man's condemnation, nor to some self- 
regarding attribute of God for a reason 
for requiring the act of redemption ; 
but man's spiritual infirmities are the 
ground of his need of being saved, and 
his inability to save himself is the rea- 
son God must do it. The crucifixion 
does not in any exclusive sense repre- 
sent redemption, but through the whole 
of the divine life which Jesus Christ led 
on earth were His acts as Redeemer 
displayed ; for every act of His by 
which any man was saved from any ill, 
represents the fulfilment of His mission 
as Saviour. All healing of diseases, the 
removal of infirmities of any kind, the 
calming of the troubled sea, the casting 
out of evil spirits, the raising of the 



Q;bc Cbriet of (5oD 

dead, the preaching of the Gospel to 
the poor, and even the endurance of 
temptation and suffering — all are acts 
of redemption, for they all are ways 
in which the infinite power of the Al- 
mighty practically extends itself into 
man's life to save him. 

In all these representations it is espe- 
cially to be noted that man's need of a 
Saviour is not from God's condemna- 
tory attitude towards him, but from his 
own spiritual want. The Bible nowhere 
promises that man shall be saved from 
the penalties of violated law, nor that 
he shall be redeemed from the wrath of 
God. In the Psalms it is declared that 
Israel is redeemed — not from God's 
wrath, but ^' from destruction " ; and 
'' from all his iniquities " ; and *' from 
our enemies" and **out of the hand 
of the Egyptians " ' ; and in Luke 
it is promised that by Jesus Israel 
should be *' saved from our enemies, 
and from the hand of all that hate 

' Psalms ciii., 4; cxxx,, 8; cxxxvi,, 24. 
90 



Hbc Sball Save Ibis people 



us." ^ " Our enemies " and " all that 
hate us" are not the penalties of a 
violated law. They can mean nothing 
less than the very evils themselves of 
our lives. Man is not saved from God 
in any sense ; nor from the legal penalty 
of the violated law, nor from the pun- 
ishment and suffering which accompany 
wrong-doing ; nor is his salvation legal 
and technical. Lusts, passions, world- 
liness and selfishness, and thence all the 
wickednesses of his hfe are the things 
man needs to be saved from ; and since 
all these may be summed up as having 
their origin in the love of self, the su- 
preme thing man needs to be saved from 
is the love of self and its dominion, that 
he may be brought into the reception 
of God and His divine life. 

This teaching concerning Christ's sal- 
vation, that it is saving from evil and 
sin, and not from the punishment due 
for violated law, is brought out with 
remarkable clearness and force in the 
^ Luke i., 71. 
91 



^bc Cbi'lst ot (3oD 



words of Jesus to the man sick of the 
palsy. After saying to him, " Thy sins 
be forgiven thee," He said to those 
who questioned His power to forgive 
sins, " That ye may know that the Son 
of man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), 
I say unto thee. Arise, and take up thy 
couch, and go unto thine house." * 
He thus appealed to His power to heal 
sickness as a proof of His authority to 
forgive sins, an appeal meaningless 
under any other supposition than that 
the forgiveness of sins is the removal of 
the evils of man's soul by the power of 
God, as illustrated by His power to re- 
move bodily sicknesses which are the 
corresponding evils of the body. 

The problem of salvation under this 
interpretation is not indicated by the 
question. How can God remit the pen- 
alty of violated law with due respect to 
His own edicts ? but, How can God be 
savingly brought into man's life? All 

' Luke v., 24. 

92 



De ©ball Save Ibis people 



the acts which Jesus did were accom- 
plished by estabhshing some kind of 
connection between Himself and the suf- 
ferer; teaching the doctrine that salva- 
tion is accomplished by uniting man 
and God. Man is in the hands of ene- 
mies ; how can God so get to him as to 
drive away these evils which beset him ? 
Man is perishing from disease ; how 
can God, as the Great Physician so 
come near to him as to heal him of this 
disease of sin ? Man is being engulfed 
in a flood, and is drowning ; how can 
God so reach him as to pluck him out 
of this inundation of evils and falsities? 
Such questions as these suggest the 
kind of salvation man needs, and the 
way God provides it. 

Under the spiritual interpretation of 
Christ's life, salvation is provided, not 
by the sacrifice of an innocent victim in 
the place of the guilty, but by God's 
use of the Son to effect a practical en- 
trance into man's life for his salvation. 
We have already seen that the Son is 

93 



Zbc Cbrist ot (5oD 



the image of God, begotten and born 
into the hfe of man. This image is the 
instrument, the hand, or the body, 
through which God gets access to man 
to save him. And God is our Saviour; 
not the Son as distinguished from the 
Father, but the Son as the visible in- 
strumentality of the Father. 

In adopting this interpretation of the 
saving acts of Jesus' life we must not 
forget this first and most essential char- 
acteristic, that the finiteness and the 
limited personality of Jesus, and the 
local and temporal nature of His acts 
as related in Gospel story, do not put 
any limit upon His real greatness, nor 
upon the greatness of the redemption 
thus revealed to us. His limitation and 
the limitation of His doings, and the 
limitation of the people with whom He 
associated, are adaptations to the re- 
stricted field of our vision. The man 
Jesus whom our eyes behold, or who is 
brought before us in New Testament 
delineation, is a diminuted picture of 

94 



1be Sball Save Ibis ipeople 



the Great Spiritual Jesus, the Mighty 
Christ, through whom God wrought the 
salvation of man ; and the individual to 
whom it is narrated that Jesus brought 
healing life, should be thought of as 
representing the race of man, and his 
being healed as representing a step in 
the great redemption. It was all hu- 
manity that was immersed in evil and 
obsessed by hell, and it was all humanity 
that God through the larger Christ, rep- 
resented by Jesus and His healing acts, 
liberated from spiritual infirmities, rep- 
resented by the bodily infirmities of 
those whom Jesus cured, and thus saved. 
The simple tales of what Jesus did, thus 
bring before our eyes, in a form they 
can receive, a vision of the redemption 
which the infinite Father, in a humanity 
taken from man, wrought for the sin- 
burdened and hell-beset human race. 

In apparent opposition to these inter- 
pretations it may be well to look at the 
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which at 
the first reading seems to teach the old 

95 



Zbc QbviBt of (5oD 



doctrine : *' Surely he hath borne our 
grief and carried our sorrows. . . . 
He was wounded for our transgressions, 
he was bruised for our iniquities : the 
chastisement of our peace was upon 
him ; and with his stripes we are 
healed." ' But there is a scriptural 
and thus an authoritative interpretation 
of this passage strangely ignored by the 
prevailing schools of exegesis, which 
demonstrates that this does not teach 
the doctrine of vicarious atonement. In 
Matthew it is written, " When the even 
was come, they brought unto him many 
that were possessed with devils : and 
he cast out the spirits with his word, 
and healed all that were sick: that it 
might be fulfilled that was spoken by 
Esaias the prophet, saying. Himself 
took our infirmities and bare our sick- 
nesses." ^ Observe that this story rep- 
resents Christ as saving man by casting 
out devils and healing from sicknesses, 
thus picturing an actual salvation from 

' Verses 4, 5. ^ Matthew viii., 16, 17. 

96 



Ibc Sball Save Ibis ipeople 



evil by removing it from man's life, and 
this is stated to be in fulfilment of this 
very prophecy in Isaiah which more 
than any other prophecy has been sup- 
posed to teach the old doctrine. 

This vision of salvation in which we 
behold God extending His almighty arm 
to man to save him from spiritual sick- 
ness and death, is the picture of Jesus 
Christ as our Saviour which we find 
everywhere in the Scripture when we 
read it with our minds unfettered with 
the mediaeval ideas of God which con- 
ceive of Him as looking out for His own 
dignity like an earthly monarch, and as 
enacting laws involving the possibility 
of technical embarrassments so infinitely 
serious as to require the death of His Son 
to enable Him with due respect to Him- 
self to forgive man by not imposing the 
penalties He had threatened.' 

1 The late Bishop Jaynes of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, actually called the problem of man's 
salvation a "governmental embarrassment with 
God." 

97 



Uhc Cbrt6t of 0oD 



I have been speaking thus far of the 
salvation of the race, in which God, 
having come to man in the humanity 
of Jesus Christ, overthrew the obsessing 
hells, and established a condition of 
spiritual freedom and life in which the 
individual could be kept in a salvable 
environment. The salvation of the in- 
dividual is accomplished by his recog- 
nition of Christ as the image of God, 
and thence by the coming of God into 
his personal life. As to the race, so to 
the individual, God comes through His 
Son for the overthrow of the evils 
which beset him and for his individual 
salvation. 

God's advent into the soul of a man 
according to the man's conscious and 
voluntary acknowledgment of Jesus 
Christ as the " only begotten Son," and 
thus as " the image of God," is illus- 
trated by the way in which all mental 
forces effect an entrance into a man's 
life. These make themselves felt in 
man's spirit in accordance with the 
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images created in his sensories. Thus, 
how often have men's passions been 
stirred through music. Saul was saved 
from the oppression of evil spirits 
through its influence. It is an instru- 
mentality of recognized force in the 
management of armies. As expressed 
in song it has nourished the patriotism 
of nations, and preserved many lofty 
sentiments among men. Just what do 
these statements mean ? In its ulti- 
mate form music consists of vibrations 
of the air. These vibrations received 
into the ear excite certain physical 
sensations, which under the laws of 
representation create in man's con- 
sciousness an image of some passion, 
and that image becomes the instrument 
through which, from the world of men- 
tal states, the passion itself enters man 
and moves him. 

The expressions of ideas in books 
and in spoken language tell the same 
story. In ultimate form entering men's 
sensories as vibrations of ether or of 

99 



Zbc Cbriet of (5oD 



air, they create in his external con- 
sciousness images through which the 
affections and the thoughts that these 
images express gain access to his spirit. 

It is under this same law operating 
in the higher regions of man's soul that 
God works. Jesus Christ is the image 
of God as presented to man's external 
conceptions. As man gives this image 
of God a commanding position in his 
thoughts and in his affections, by his 
worship of Jesus Christ, and by his obe- 
dience to His commandments, it be- 
comes, under the universal laws for 
reaching man's spirit, the instrument 
through which the divine Father Him- 
self enters a man's soul for his salva- 
tion. 

Why cannot God save a man without 
the Son? Simply because only through 
such an instrumentality can He make 
Himself known, and thus give a man 
the opportunity to accept or to reject 
Him — for it is only as man in freedom 
accepts God that God can save him. It 



Ibe Sball Save ibts people 



is a universal and necessary method for 
reaching man both in the kingdom of 
his spiritual and in that of his natural 
life, that all things out of man reveal 
themselves to him, and influence him 
through images begotten in him which 
are their sons. God is intensely imma- 
nent in life ; yea, to use Mrs. Brown- 
ing's words, 

" Earth is crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God." 

But notwithstanding this immanence, 
God does not force himself into man ; 
He " stands at the door and knocks." 
(Astonishingly significant statement !) 
And God is admitted by man according 
to the conception man has of Him, and 
according to the position of influence 
he gives that conception in his life. 
By the images of God which men hold 
in their thoughts and their affections 
does He enter their hearts and save 
them from self, even as by the images 
in man's sensories are the objects of 



Zhc Cbrist ot ©oD 



this world made known to him and do 
they affect his hfe. Every conception of 
God which a man cherishes in his heart 
and out of respect for which he hves 
according to the laws of neighborly 
charity, is saving. This salvation varies 
in degree and in perfection according 
to the truth of the conception, and ac- 
cording to the quality of the sin-shun- 
ning which comes from it. Jesus Christ 
stands before the individual man as in 
a supreme degree his Saviour, because 
in Him he has an utterly matchless 
revelation of God, having in Him in- 
deed the " only begotten Son " of God, 
born into the life of man ; and in Him 
also man has an equally matchless 
revelation of a life of charity. 

This interpretation of the coming of 
Jesus Christ into the world, and of the 
redemption which is wrought through 
Him, is not a matter of legalism, nor 
founded upon a technicality ; nor is it a 
sentimentalism, a matter of "example," 
a mere instruction in the way of life ; 



1be Sball Save Ibis ipeople 



but it is a mighty salvation, being noth- 
ing less than the actual extension of 
the arm of God into the life of man. 
It is infinite in its application, operating 
everywhere, in all times, and in all states 
of human needs. It accords with uni- 
versal laws of all nature, being in the 
spiritual kingdom of life what the mode 
of sense communication with the world 
about us is in the natural kingdom of 
life. Above all, it is real ; it is living ; 
it is practical. The infinite Father is 
right here, instant with His infinite 
love, wisdom, and power to enter our 
lives, and bestow Himself upon us, press- 
ing upon us on every side more in- 
tensely than the air in which we are 
immersed, yet with infinite gentleness, 
only actually making Himself known to 
us as we permit Him by our worship 
of Him in His Son. Jesus Christ as 
our Redeemer, in this understanding of 
Him, stands always before us as an 
ever open door of admission to the in- 
finitely saving Power of God. 
103 



VII. 

WE BEHELD HIS GLORY 

" And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth." — John i., 14. 

HOW can we behold the glory of 
God ? How can we even think 
of Him whom modern philosophers 
call the ''unknowable" and the ''un- 
thinkable ? " We need a description of 
Him that will meet the demands of our 
highest intelligence, and at the same 
time will satisfy our spiritual hungers 
and thirsts. The presentation of a con- 
ception of God that can meet the wants 
of the spiritual-minded man whose natu- 
ral intelligence is enlightened by the 
science and the learning of to-day, is a 
great need which is pressing upon us. 
104 



mc JSebclD 1bi6 (Bloris 



To meet this need one class of re- 
ligious men declare that God must be 
thought of as a Person. God in the 
spiritual apprehension of Him, these 
hold, is a Being of love and wisdom ; 
thus is a Being of life. But love and 
wisdom, that is, life, as we know them, 
exist only in persons. Therefore only 
in person can God be conceived of as a 
living God ; it is only as we think of 
Him thus that we can place Him be- 
fore us in distinct form as an object of 
worship; only in the thought of Him 
as a Person is possible companionship ; 
only in such thought can our love be 
moved to its depths, and our wisdom 
enlightened ; and in this form alone can 
He be our Father. Only in this form 
can man's hunger and thirst for God be 
satisfied. He thus presents Himself to 
us in revelation, and therefore should 
we always think of God as a Person. 

But another class of thinkers, object- 
ing to this, remind us that person, in the 
only way in which we know person, is 

105 



ZTbe Cbclst of (5ot) 



limited, and that God must be conceived 
of as without limit. A person must be 
confined to a certain locality, and to a 
certain size — things inconceivable with 
God. The " Big-Man conception of 
God," as it has been called, is declared 
by them to be an absurdity. Our idea 
of God must be commensurable with 
His works. Force, they say, which is 
everywhere at work " making for right- 
eousness " — this is God. 

To the spiritual-minded man this lat- 
ter line of thought is as the blow of 
death. How can a man with his soul 
hungering for the tender compassion of 
God, have that longing satisfied by the 
conception of a force, or of an atmos- 
phere? How can he be fed by the 
contemplation of these things operating 
on a lower plane than the vital forces 
of his own body, however big and uni- 
versal they may be ? Man's spiritual 
hunger can never be satisfied by look- 
ing down for God, and recognizing Him 
as a mighty force impelling him from 
io6 



me JBebelD ibis ©lorg 



beneath, through the relentless warfare 
of unremitting evolutionary battle, to 
rise. Nothing less than finding God 
above him, stretching His arm down to 
bless and to save, will meet his needs. 
Atmospheres, and chemical affinities, 
the potentialities of atoms, the inherent 
tendencies of matter, and the wonders 
of protoplasm, will never, with the 
spiritual-minded man, take the place of 
the sweetness of divine love and the 
satisfactoriness of divine wisdom. 

Confronted by these seemingly irre- 
concilable conceptions, the weight of 
the argument for each of which must be 
granted, the problem of uniting them 
comes home to us. Each of these is 
right in its way, and each is wrong. A 
union of them is what we need, and 
that union we obtain when we think 
of God in Person, but in infinite Per- 
son, that is, in representative Person ; 
and we thus think of God, and thence 
meet this need by the interpretation of 
the life of Jesus Christ under the law 

107 



Zbc Cbr(6t of 0oD 



of the parable. The conception of God 
as being at once a Person and at the 
same time being above all person, even 
as boundless as creation itself, a concep- 
tion combining at once the advantages 
of both of these conflicting ideas and 
the disadvantages of neither, is realized 
when we recognize Jesus as a Parable 
of the attributes of God. The limi- 
tations of the personality with which 
we in such case invest God are acknow- 
ledged in our thought to be derived 
from ourselves, but the realness, the 
humanity, and the nearness which by 
thinking of God as a Person are made 
features of our conception of Him, are 
veritable attributes of His, and through 
this recognition of them by us, is He 
brought into our life. 

Thus conceived of, Jesus Christ sat- 
isfies all persons with their every variety 
of spiritual need. The child, the exter- 
nal man, the man of business, the scien- 
tist, the philosopher, and he who is 
seeking an interior walk with his divine 
io8 



me :©ebelD Ibts (3lors 



Father — each may find in Him an all- 
satisfying image of God. To each of 
these He exhibits a face expressing a 
conception of God adapted to fill the 
wants of his highest wisdom and his 
purest affections. 

Thus conceived of, He is with each 
individual the all-in-all to his constantly 
changing personal states, varying, as 
they do, from the cradle to the death- 
bed. He is natural to us when we are 
natural, and spiritual to us when we 
need what is spiritual. Thus Jesus, 
when spiritually understood, is to every 
one a living image of God, growing 
with the growth of his spiritual needs, 
and standing before him forever filling 
the highest possibilities of his capacity 
for understanding God. From the most 
natural state of the religious man to 
his loftiest spiritual possibilities, Jesus 
Christ, in this understanding of Him, 
fills his life. 

But unless we use the symbol in the 
interpretation of Jesus Christ, while He 
109 



^be Cbrtst ot (5oD 



may satisfy our childish conception of 
God, when we become capable of 
grander realizations of what God must 
be, we are either held back spiritually 
to conceptions of Him too limited and 
too personal, or we find it impossible to 
unite our ideas of Christ with our ideas 
of God. How can the " Man of Sor- 
rows" be seen as the "only begotten" 
of Him who holds the universe in order? 
If, however, we interpret Him spiritu- 
ally, the loveliness, the personality, and 
the humaneness we need in God we find 
in Jesus Christ, united with the infinities 
of creation. We have in such case, the 
tender compassion of the Man — without 
the limitations of man as we know man ; 
we have the infinitude of creation, with 
neither its spatial distribution nor its 
lack of the attributes of the soul. 

Yet our apprehension of nature serves 
our spiritual apprehension of Christ — 
by giving us an outer image through 
which we can form a conception of His 
infinity ; for in this conception of Jesus 



"Mc :fiSebelD ibis ©lor^ 



Christ, as we have seen, there is involved 
the doctrine that our consciousness of 
spiritual things is the demonstration of 
a spiritual universe, just as the vision 
of the sky is the witness of a natural 
universe ; that the spiritual is as stu- 
pendous as the natural — that is, is in- 
finite ; in a word, that there must be 
a kingdom of life co-extensive with the 
kingdom of nature, which last is in 
itself the kingdom of death. For as 
the kingdom of nature is known to us 
through the witness of our bodily senses, 
so, with equal logic and greater certainty, 
through the witness of our spiritual con- 
sciousness, is there made known to us a 
corresponding kingdom of life. In the 
kingdom of life all is living. The heat 
waves which quiver through its atmos- 
pheres are from love ; the light which 
illumines it is from wisdom, and all its 
sights and sounds and feelings are the 
sense-forms of the states of the soul. 
It is the pressure of this kingdom of 
life into nature that produces the living 



Uhc Cbrfst ot Got) 



forms about us which are wrought from 
the substances of the earth. The life of 
nature is the response of material sub- 
stances to the inflowing of this living 
kingdom. Evolution is the outer ap- 
pearance of what is really the effect of 
the involution of this kingdom of life in 
the dead kingdom of matter. As man 
is living in both kingdoms he may rec- 
ognize in his own personal experiences 
the presence of both ; and from what he 
learns of the character of the dead world 
about him, to whose forces he is now 
physically, and thus, as to his senses, 
subject, he may know of the corre- 
sponding character of the living world 
within, to whose forces spiritually, and 
thus as to the love-life and the thought- 
life of the soul, he is subject. 

Nothing is more gentle, sweet, and 
personal in its appearance than one's 
individual consciousness of the greater 
forces of nature. How delicately the 
light ministers to the dehghts of the 



Wic JSebclD fbie ©lore 



ceives the exquisite sensation which a 
vision of beauty makes upon the eye, 
that the light from which this impres- 
sion comes is an emanation of transcen- 
dent wonderfulness, which, through the 
infinite realms of space from ten million 
of suns in boundless munificence, floods 
the universe of nature ? The sensation 
in the eye is the impression which this 
vast efHux makes upon a man's personal 
consciousness. How gentle the pressure 
by which one is made aware of his 
weight as he rests from fatigue! Yet 
that little physical feeling is his indi- 
vidual experience of gravitation, the 
stupendous power by which the uni- 
verse is held in order, and under the 
control of which the suns and planets 
pursue their courses. And when one 
basks in the invigorating sunshine, the 
genial warmth which brings comfort to 
his limbs is his personal perception of 
the sun's heat, that marvellous solar 
outpouring by which life is made pos- 
sible on the earth and in the worlds 

113 



trbe Cbrlst of (3oD 



about us. While all these things come 
into our individual lives as sources of 
personal comfort and happiness, and 
within the tiniest limitations as to 
amount and intensity, they are at the 
same time in themselves so mighty and 
so universal that they fill all the king- 
dom of nature with their presence and 
their power. 

If we would have conceptions of spirit- 
ual things at all to be compared with 
our conceptions of natural things, we 
must recognize these facts of our bodily 
sensations as representing equally sig- 
nificant truths concerning the things of 
our spiritual consciousness, which are 
the sensations of the soul. Personal as 
the life of our mind appears, its varied 
forms of consciousness are the ways in 
which the great forces of the spiritual 
universe and of God reveal themselves 
to us. One's intellectual life is his re- 
sponse to the great currents of the king- 
dom of life which impress the organs of 
his mind. His affectional life is the 
114 



We JSebelD Ibis (3loc^ 



effect of his sensitiveness to an atmos- 
phere of love as real, as powerful, and 
as infinite in the realm of the soul, as are 
the vibrations of heat in the realm of 
nature. For if we would know God 
spiritually as we know His works natur- 
ally we must recognize this mighty 
truth, — that the life-forces of the spiritual 
universe are as much greater than the 
life realized from the influence of those 
life-forces in human souls, as the forces 
of nature are greater than a man's bodily 
powers. The restriction of our appre- 
ciation of the love and wisdom of the 
kingdom of life to the love and the wis- 
dom which men on earth are conscious 
of, is as limiting to the conceptions we 
should have of life as it would be limit- 
ing to the conceptions we have of nature 
to think of the muscular powers which 
come within our bodily experience 
as constituting the whole of nature's 
forces. As all nature is crammed with 
the mysterious ether through the in- 
strumentality of which life, heat, attrac- 

115 



Q:be Cbr(6t of (BoD 



tion, actinic force, and many undiscov- 
ered powers operate to hold the universe 
in order and conduct it onward in its 
unfolding to ever greater perfection, so 
with equal universality of presence and 
infinitude of extent is the kingdom of 
man's spirit crammed with the living 
forces which work for the ever more 
complete involution of God in the evo- 
lution of man. Man's religion, and with 
the Christian his conception of Jesus 
Christ, is his personal consciousness of 
this infinitude of God and of His im- 
manence in the spiritual life of man ; 
and through his worship of Jesus Christ 
in word and in deed may they be made 
to come practically into his life for his 
salvation — that is, for the realization of 
the life of God in his soul. 

The most marvellous and significant 
feature of the natural fact is the com- 
bination of the personality of one's ex- 
perience with the infinitude of the forces 
producing it. The infinitude of nature 
and the limitations of man's conscious- 
it6 



Wic JSebelD Ibis 0lors 



ness of it do not contradict each other. 
And equally true is the corresponding 
spiritual fact that the infinitude of God 
and the limitation of man's knowledge 
of Him, that His being greater than all 
person and yet rightly thought of as a 
Person, are with due mutual recognition 
united in the spiritual interpretation of 
the life of Jesus Christ. As one comes 
into a grander conception of the Creator 
from a more perfect knowledge of crea- 
tion, he is apt to lose some of his con- 
sciousness of God's personal nearness. 
But in this interpretation of Christ's 
life, both of these essentials of a true 
conception of God are realized in the 
soul of man. Jesus Christ is in this 
understanding of Him more near, more 
lovely, more sweet, more precious, and 
a more personal presence of God in the 
individual life than under the old under- 
standing of Him ; while at the same 
moment we possess a spiritual concep- 
tion of God as mighty as is the natural 
conception which the scientist has of 

117 



^be Cbrist ot 0oD 



the forces of nature. These last we 
appropriate to our bodily comfort with 
even more personal satisfaction, on ac- 
count of our knowledge of the infinite 
abundance of what we in such infinitesi- 
mal amo.unts can make use of. Just as 
we delight more in sunshine as an object 
of beauty to the senses and of delight 
to the body because of our knowledge 
that its nature bafifles the grasp of man's 
intelligence, and that its marvellous 
abundance surpasses his imagination ; 
and just as from our scientific appre- 
hension of the heavenly bodies we enter 
more appreciatively into the enjoyment 
of the beauty of the sunset, the solem- 
nity of the starlight night and every 
other of the numberless forms of gran- 
deur and loveliness among the visions of 
the sky, so correspondingly is our appre- 
ciation of Jesus Christ as bringing a 
personal presence of God to our indi- 
vidual life made greater by interpreting 
Him as the Parable of God. The per- 



ns 



-mc JBebelD Ibis (Blorfi 



sonal loveliness of His life is not done 
away with by the truth that within it 
there is an inconceivably greater spirit- 
ual loveliness, surpassing the grasp of 
our highest intelligence ; rather we enter 
into an enjoyment of His adaptation to 
our personal needs with a vastly greater 
satisfaction on account of our knowledge 
that every attribute of His which we 
worship is an adaptation to us of that 
which, as it exists in Him, is infinitely 
more lovely than we can see, — yea, than 
we can understand. 

To sum it all in one word : By the 
symbolic interpretation of the life of 
Jesus Christ, God as a Person, and God 
as an infinite and all-pervading Force ; 
God as a loving Father, interested in 
the minutest features of my personal 
welfare, and God incarnating himself 
during the ages through the evolution 
of universal man ; God the known and 
God the unknowable ; God the Saviour 
of man, and God the Creator of the 

119 



Cbe Cbriet of (3oD 



universe ; in a word, God as finited in 
man, and God the Infinite, are united 
into ONE. 

" He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
" I and the Father are one." 



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